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Well Astroworkers, the time has finally come for you to venture into the expanse of the Galaxy and feed the hungry masses! Nom Nom Galaxy ver. 1.00 is now open for business!

It’s been a long journey since we first released on Early Access almost a year and a half ago – even longer if you count our time as PixelJunk Inc when this blog first started. We’ve learned a lot along the way! Two PAX Prime attendances in the Indie MEGABOOTH, awards at Brazil’s Independent Games Festival and GDC China’s Independent Game Festival, appearances at SXSW 2015, Gamescom 2014, PSX 2014, BitSummit 2013 & 2014, Indiecade 2014 and EGX 2014… whew! We’ve been hoping all over letting people sample the soup! Add to that the huge contributions that all of our Early Access players have added and we fell like we’ve got a soup that’s been seasoned by the best Astroworkers on the planet.

The full release of Nom Nom Galaxy adds:

Complete campaign with 27 different worlds to explore

Improved online 4P co-op

Galactic Challenge Mode with rotating challenges that earn you Galactic Gum to use in Conquest and S.O.O.P Sim modes

Steam Leaderboards

Steam Trading Cards

Steam Backgrounds

Steam Emoticons

Steam Achievements

Of course, the work for an Astroworker is never done, so we’ll be continuing to improve Nom Nom Galaxy over the next few months. There are a lot of things still be requested in the forums that we’d like to address. I don’t want to get into details now, but we’re hoping to add a few modes to keep the soup flavors just as interesting as the first taste.

Long time no soup, Astroworkers! Massive here to bring you the details on our latest update. We’ve made a number of big changes, fixed a lot of bugs, and added some features that you in the community have asked for. We’re almost ready to go full steam, as it were, and just have a few more things to experiment with. This update is another big one, so get ready!

Four on the Floor
In this update we’re finally bringing something that you’ve wanted for a very long time: 4P ONLINE CO-OP!

Now you can attempt to corner the space soup market as a member of a capitalistic quartet, delegating task to those best suited for the job like a BOSS! Explore further, build bigger, fight harder, MAKE THAT MONEY! You can combine 4 individual players or 2 local co-op and 2 other individual players. You can even use the newly added friend invite system to build your team!

This feature is still being improved, so the friends you invite will need to have Nom Nom Galaxy running or they won’t automatically join the session. However, this will be streamlined in the future.

Consumer Reports
We’ve also been listening to your feedback and requests in response to the game in general and the 00.99a update in particular, and a number of those are also reflected in this update. The first of these is: you can now choose which gum to chew!

Sugar HighGalactic Gum comes in a variety of flavors that do strange, science-type things to Astroworkers, but until know you were completely at the whims of fate as to what you could use and when. This has been changed so you can now choose the best stick of gum to chew when a potentially life threatening or financially explosive situation is impending! Need more defense funding? Gold Rush! Pesky rock wall in the way? Boulder Bash! The power is yours!

A Shocking Display

We moved the DANGER banner! Although the purpose of this display is to warn Astroworkers of impending danger, it was often responsible for its fair share of headaches itself, by obstructing your view of the action. The position has been lowered to avoid this, and the transparency of the banner itself increased. Now YOU are the danger.

Under ConstructionCorridor parts can now be overwritten with parts of a different shape, costing only the matter difference between the two. This should help with speedy renovations of the factory to better accommodate Astroworker needs.

Garden VarietyPreviously, plant growth conditions did not carry over into S.O.O.P. mode when starting with a Conquest mode factory, but this has been remedied. Now Astroworkers can continue cultivating their little stretch of land uninterrupted! Also, to make automated gardening more effective, Clarence’s harvesting time has been increased to prevent gardens from being destroyed.

There are also a number of smaller usability improvements and bug fixes, which are as follows:

Planet GSA-002 (Tutorial 2) removed

Both control schemes (Controller and Keyboard/Mouse) can now be used in menus, regardless of settings

Added windowed fullscreen as a display option

Increased sprinting oxygen cost

Fixed bug where 1P controller vibrated in place of 2P controller

Fixed bug where girders damaged enemies

Expanded construction trigger radius in tutorial

Fixed bug where player died if riding Hopper EX in water when battery died

Fixed bug where player got stuck in wall if damaged while riding Hopper EX

Last week we dropped a galactic bomb of an update that added a bunch of new content to Nom Nom Galaxy. We’re going to get into some more specifics of that update this week. We’ve also fixed some of the issues that our tireless Early Access Astroworkers helped uncover, and added key binding support!

You’ll notice that your robot minions have undergone a few upgrades in this update and there’s even a new face in the bunch. Freddy, Travis, and Ben have all been tweaked to improve your soup production.

Freddy & Travis
Freddy and Travis are your vertical movement robots in the soup production line, moving ingredients and soups up or down through the base. In previous versions, Freddy handled sending everything up, while Travis would move things down. We’ve now given both robots the functionality to pass ingredients or soup up and down, but separated which items they will handle. Freddy is now exclusively an ingredient robot and Travis will take care of the soup.

In earlier versions you’d often have Freddy or Travis throwing ingredients passed to them to your soup rocket yards, or towards factories that didn’t take those ingredients. With this change, you’ll have a greater degree of control over how soup production flows through the base.

BenFreddy and Travis got little tweaks, but Ben has had a full system overhaul! Ben 2.0 has gone back to doing what dogs do best – burying stuff! Place Ben around any ingredients and he’ll replant them. Ben’s original purpose was to find ingredients and bring them back to his doghouse. While we appreciate the pooch’s intentions, the system was a little cumbersome and wasn’t working quite as we had hoped.

Planting speed and Ben’s patrolling pathing are still being tweaked, so let us know how the Astroworker’s Best Friends is working in your bases.

ClarenceThe newest addition to our robo-family is Clarence, a harvesting robo. In many ways, Clarence, paired with the new changes to Ben, is the the final piece in the soup automation puzzle. Place Clarence in your farms and he will harvest any plants that have grown to full height. Without having to come back and tend to your farms, this frees up your Astroworker to explore more of the planets.

Updates & Fixes

Bugs Fixes

Fixed bug causing game to crash accessing the Gum menu

Video setting should be saving correctly to profiles and there is a confirmation dialogue for changes.

S.O.O.P and Corporate Conquest bases can now be reset properly

Fixed bug preventing some players from progressing in Tutorial 2

For some strange reason, “Alt + Q“and “Alt + PrintScreen” was mapped to quit the game. This has been removed.

Fix issue preventing data from saving properly

You can no longer toggle full screen with “Alt + Enter”

Controller Configs

Keybindings! You can now change your key configuration on keyboards.

NNG should now be better at recognizing which input you are using (controller vs. keyboard + mouse)

It’s been quite a while since we last spoke! After the Christmas update we took some time away from the blog and our regular updates to put our heads down and work on a host of key features. We’ve had a lot cooking up and now we’re ready to unveil the merger between feedback from our dedicated early access supporters and the ingredients we’ve had on the shelf at Q.

And because we really want everyone to get a taste of this new flavor of Nom Nom, we’re reducing the price for the remainder of Early Access to $9.99 (Note: Price change will be reflected on Steam later today). If you’ve been waiting for a good sale to check it out, it’s the perfect time.

There have been sweeping changes and updates throughout the whole Galaxy. Because the scope of this update is pretty huge, we’ll just give an overview today and then give more details about the changes over the next couple of weeks. When you launch Nom Nom you’re going to see new robots, enemies, planets, building parts, optimization, new modes, new moves, and… gum!?!

The foremost issue on our plate was getting Nom Nom Galaxy optimized for better play on a wider variety of machines. It’s something that we hoped to be able to address earlier in the game’s development, so we’re really happy to put this new update out. Essentially, we’ve migrated Nom Nom Galaxy from our old PixelJunk Engine to an updated version that Double Eleven created when they were porting the other PixelJunk games to Steam. The original engine was beginning to show it’s age – it’s the engine we used to create all of our classic PlayStation 3 games. And while the ol’ girl served us well, Nom Nom was sometimes too much for her to handle. The game looks pretty simple on the surface, but there’s lots of stuff going on in the background, like how the planets are held together, fluid and gas dynamics, and calculating the “living parameters” of the plants and animals.

The update to the new engine, along with lots of code optimization on the team’s part, means that soup production for our Astroworkers should be a much better experience. There’s support for a wider variety of graphics cards, controllers, and monitor setups.

We don’t expect everything to be perfect straight off the bat, so make sure you jump on the forums and let us know how Nom Nom is running on your rig.

Okay, I know you’re eager to jump back into the soupy fray, but there’s something that we’ve got to do before we start. Because of the magnitude of the changes, old Nom
Nom save data is no longer compatible with the current version and you’ll need to start new games. When you start you’ll be greeted with a new screen for managing your game data. Name your company and you’re be ready to work.

One of our largest tasks was bringing together Yamamura’s quirky art and our soup theme into an entertaining story and campaign mode. We’ve hinting at the larger theme of galactic domination by means of soup, but now you’ll be able to dig into the background of the Galaxy. When you get to the new main menu, you’ll see the new campaign mode, Corporate Conquest, where you can start your hostile takeover of the galaxy.

Corporate Conquest starts you at the training facility and you’ll need to finish the two tutorials in order before you start exploring. After completing them you can go to any planet in the first sector of the galaxy. Each planet has two different play styles, a market battle vs. rival soup corporations and S.O.O.P, a sandbox mode for all those Astroworkers who want to make bases that are visible from space! You’ll need to complete the market share battle to unlock the S.O.O.P mode for each planet.

To move to other sectors of the galaxy Robo-shacho requires that you discover recipes available on those planets. When you’ve satisfied him, the gate will unlock and you can move on to new planets.

The new Corporate Conquest mode has changed the way research works in Nom Nom Galaxy, also. Conquering rivals in market share battles earns you research unlocks. Those unlocks will carry over to future planets. We’ve done away with unlock keys on the planet, but you’ll still need to earn enough gold by selling soup to buy research.

Well, I can imagine that by now the soup in your noggin is swimming with all of this new info that we’re dumping on you. This is just the beginning, but it should get you prepared to take on the mantle of Astroworker once more. We’ll be back later this week with more information on the new and improved Nom Nom Galaxy!

We’ve got a doozy of an update for you this week! Another often requested robot finally joins the team, a plant and planet make an appearance, and Nom Nom Galaxy wins another award!

Hungry soup connoisseurs!

One of my favorite things about developing Nom Nom Galaxy is taking the game to shows and getting to talk to people about the game and watch them play. We’ve been in Early Access for about six months now and talking with you all on Steam, and with the popularity of live streaming it’s easy to see people playing Nom Nom Galaxy online. But there’s nothing quite like seeing it in person and interacting with the players.

Excellence in Audio! This might be the Electric Bends first award!

This year we’ve been fortunate enough to take Nom Nom to three(!) shows, BIG in Brazil, PAX Prime, and GDC China last week as a finalist for the Independent Games Festival. Nom Nom took the top prize at BIG, was part of the Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX Prime, and now we’ve been honored with an Excellence in Audio Award from IGF China!

We’d like to thank everyone at GDC China and IGF China for having us at the show and honoring us with the award. The audio in Nom Nom Galaxy was all done by our in-house jam band, The Electric Bends. This award is sure to push those guys back into the studio to cook up some more tunes for the Galaxy!

On to this week’s update!

Atomic Daawwwwwg!

A pooch with a greenthumb!

The latest addition to your robot army is sure to be a welcome one. Since Nom Nom hit Early Access, there’s been on element that’s been from factory automation: Harvesting ingredients! No matter how well you’ve designed your factory, your Astroworker has always had to do the dirty work of pulling up the plants. Soup Co. has sent some relief in the form of the Astroworker’s best friend: Ben!

Most dogs like to destroy gardens, but Ben is special case. You can unlock Ben for three keys in the research menu and at a cost of 150 gold per robot. After summoning Ben, hand him an ingredient to sniff and he’ll move to harvest plants that have fully grown and leave one ingredient behind for it the next plant to grow. Ben will deposit the ingredients in his doghouse, which can be connected to your factory from the sides or the bottom. He’ll also climb up one block terrain, giving you some more building options. Like all of the other robots, give him a punch and he’ll drop whatever he’s carrying. To change what Ben is harvesting, simply give him another ingredient.

Killer Pumpkins

The plant life in Nom Nom Galaxy is nothing to shake a stick, or buzzsaw, at! In the tradition of overly aggressive tomatys and mean mushrooms, we introduce the latest in pugilistic produce, the Killer Pumpkin! (That’s a temp name. If you have any ideas for another, let us know!)

This pumpkin grows from vines and drops down upon unsuspecting Astroworkers. If it misses, the pumpkin does a rolling attack to pummel its target!

Pumpkins only appear on Iddil now, but expect to find them on other planets soon!

Other Updates/Fixes

Added a VS screen at the start of the game

Rival company market share now appears in the planet percentage area

When playing co-op and holding an item, the factory will only blink for the player holding the item

New stage, Kakoi, added

We’ve removed the winter season because of a silly bug. It’ll be back once we’ve squashed it. But for now, enjoy a Game of Thrones style Summer.

Added an arrow to help you get back to your money and matter after dying.

Our update this week that addresses some outstanding issues, including the tutorial, vehicles and combat – all things we talked to you guys about during PAX. We’ve also added a new robot that addresses one of the most requested additions to the factories: throwing ingredients down! Before we get into the update, Nom Nom Galaxy continued its tour of gaming events this last weekend by making its debut at IndieCade!

The latest build was available for would be soup entrepreneurs to try out. This build for the PS4 includes our new tutorial, which was debuted for the first time at the show. We’ve also been busy getting ready for yet another show, GDC China. Nom Nom Galaxy was nominated for Best Game in the Independent Games Festival there, wish us luck!

Okay, on to the meat and potatoes (soup)!

Down We Go!

This week we’d like to introduce a new robot to the team, Travis! Travis will add a new dimension to your factories by allowing you to finally send ingredients down.

Make Your Mark

While we love Soup Co., there’s nothing quite like owning your own company. From now on soup meisters can name their own company when starting their factory. The name will appear in the top right corner next to your rivals. We’re looking for ways to display this more prominently. How would you like to brand your company in Nom Nom Galaxy?

Learning the Ropes

There’s a brand new tutorial stage available at the stage select menu. This replaces the original tutorial we launched with at the beginning of Early Access. We think this new tutorial does a much better job of explaining just how to get your factory up and running. It’s still a little bit raw (keyboard and mouse prompts aren’t in just yet) so we’re looking for any feedback on how we can improve it.

That New Car Smell

There have been numerous adjustments to balance with the vehicles, including costs, and power duration. It will now be more apparent when a vehicle is running out of power. The Hoverboard was a little bit overpowered and has had it’s jumping toned down. And the Pogo, which wasn’t very useful before, has received a major update! Pressing the RB will now extend a drill that can remove blocks or attack enemies and animals! Finally, we’ve added a slightly localized Chinese version in the current update to assist (me) with showing NNG in the IGF Pavillion at GDC China this weekend. It’s still a work in progress.

Last week we were occupied with the Tokyo Game Show and didn’t have a blog update, but we’re back in force this week with some welcome changes! We’ve been listening to the feedback on social media/Steam and this week’s update addresses some of the issues our fellow Astroworkers have been concerned with. This isn’t the last update, by any means, so continue to let us know how you feel about the changes as we develop Nom Nom.

Jump Jet

Gracefully navigating hostile environments is paramount for any successful Astroworker. For just three research keys, this new upgrade gives you the ability to double-jump!

Muscleman

One of the most popular requests has been the ability to carry more than one item. This upgrade has been long debated by the team on how it should actually be implemented. In the distant past we had a backpack type inventory, but it was cumbersome and therefore removed. We want to bring some of the functionality, however, so we’re starting by giving the Astroworker an upgrade to carry two items.

We’re still not sold on how this feature is currently working, so we want to hear players feedback on this one. Basically, this is a temporary solution that could be permanent (or expanded) based on your feedback. So let us know what you think!

Auto-climb

Improving getting around the planet has been a concern for us. Too often it’s easier to just mow down everything in your way instead of actually walking around the terrain. We’ve added an auto-climb for one-step blocks now that we think will make it a little less frustrating.

The speed of regular climbing has also been adjusted. We’ve slowed it down so that you can hang on to edges a little easier. Please let us know if the speed is too slow.

Aim Lock

It’s now possible to lock the position of the Buzzsaw and Shotgun by pressing L2 while using them. This makes it easier to jump and use both items.

First Rocket

You’ll now be treated to a nice little animation when your first rocket goes out to customers!

Shotgun Floppy

The shotgun will now destroy blocks containing floppy disks.

Secondary Damage

Combat has become a lot more fun with this update. When you hit something with your buzzsaw now, other attacks, like bullets, missiles, and attacks from other Astroworkers, will add to the damage. This sets up some interesting combo opportunities. It’s just the first of many improvements we have for combat.

Ver. 0.17 Hotfix

A combat bug that caused Astroworkers to take damage in the same fashion as enemies snuck its way into 0.16. This has been fixed in 0.17!

Astroworkers, welcome to PAX Update 0.14! This update will be on the floor at PAX today, but even if you can’t make it to Seattle you can enjoy the soups of our labors! This update adds more ingredients, more enemies, and some adjustments to research. We’ve also thrown in some nagging bugs.

Because of the large amount of changes in the current build, we recommend you delete your previous save data. You can delete your saved data from the planet select menu. With that said, let’s look at the new stuff!

Like a Boss

Nom Nom Galaxy is all about battling rival corporations for galactic domination of the soup market. Up to this point, your rivals have only sent small waves of alien mercs to disrupt your operation. Starting with this update, they’ll be bringing out the big guns! Or should we say, the big UFOs!

This behemoth will appear after you’ve launched a certain number of rockets. When your rivals feel like you’re getting a little too big for your britches, they’ll send over this ship to knock you down a few pegs. You’ll have to make some sacrifices to repel it!

Exploring Strange New Worlds

The ‘galaxy’ in Nom Nom Galaxy continues to expand. You’ll now be able to visit Iddil, a heavily forested planet, Unba,a water world, and the mountainous Pomelyk. Each planet will require it’s own strategy in order to build a successful factory. Gameplay for these planets is in development, so we’d love to get feedback from the community on them.

IDDIL

Iddil introduces new fruit bearing trees and spiny thorn plants. Neither can be moved easily, so you’ll have to plan your base around them.

UNBA

If you fancy a swim, Unba is your planet. With most of the stage area covered in water, you’ll have to create island bases in different places to expand your factory. The ever-important Oxyflower has the added benefit of repelling water, so you can use it to plant under the waves, or prevent water from entering your base.

POMELYK

The most challenging of the new stages is Pomelyk. The rocky planet offers few places to cultivate your ingredients and deposits of matter and discs are sparse, so you’ll have to maximize your management skills to expand.

Expanding Your Pallet

There are a few new flora to add to your recipe book now. We haven’t had proper trees in Nom Nom but that’s because we’ve only been exploring deserts and plains. Iddil is our first planet to introduce a forest biome.

The trees of Iddil bear delicious fruit, but are sturdy and can’t be chopped down. You’ll have to plan your factories around these trees to harvest them. The trees will die in winter, so stock up on fruit for the cold season.

Needle Grass, like the trees of Iddil, is difficult to get rid of. It’s covered in thorns so punching it will only leave you with bloody gloves, and if you dig it up with your buzzsaw, the remaining bits will sprout as new plants. You’ll have to use other tools to take it out-but it’s rumored that beautiful flowers sometimes blossom on its thorny branches…

Nom Nom now has an uber tuber! Yams grow underground, and like the trees and Splinter Grass, are resistant to conventional harvesting. If you want to get to the goods, you’ll have to dig them up!

AdjustmentsThe following items have had their costs adjusted:

Hoverboard –
Increased Research key costs from 2 to 3
Increased the Gold cost from 100g to 1200g

Jack
Increased Research keys costs from 3 to 6
Increased Gold cost from 100g to 450g

Floppy disks should be easier to dig up now.

Mole enemies won’t be nearly as persistent in destroying your base and will disappear after paying you a visit.

Bug Fixes– Fixed an issue where you could create two offices on the Tutorial Stage
– Fixed a bug that allowed ivy and seaweed to grow in places they normally couldn’t

Whether you’re ranging for ingredients or defending your factory, getting around the planet quickly is paramount to the Astroworker. The most pedestrian way to travel is, of course, by foot. But with a few upgrades you can equip yourself with a light and fast hoverboard, or a resource hauling vacuum tank.

One of the problems with these vehicles, however, is that you have limited access to some of the Astroworker’s abilities. If you’re riding, you’re riding! In the latest update, we’re starting to expand upon those abilities to hopefully make the vehicles more attractive options for not only moving around planets, but also defending and collecting resources.

For example, Astroworkers can now send heads flying from the hoverboard with the beam sword. This make sprinting back to the base for defense both speedy and deadly. Imagine cutting down your attackers mid-air!

The vacuum tank upgrade takes away some of the tedium of collecting ingredients. Simply use your buzzsaw to dig up the ground, then the vacuum to collect your bounty!

Update Notes:

Astroworkers can now use weapons while riding in vehicles!

The beam sword can be used when riding the hoverboard and the buzzsaw while riding the vacuum tank.

Rival companies sales data is now shown on the sales chart at the end of each day.

Data from your play session will now be displayed after you’ve won/lost the planet.

Players arms will now properly animate when aiming the shotgun and point in the correct direction.

Last week we modified the oxygen so that it causes plants to grow faster. This week we”ve further expanded that concept!

When you enter one of Nom Nom”s strange worlds, you”ll find that a new special plant has invaded the biosphere! This new plant, the OxyFlower, produces large amounts of oxygen as it grows. Astroworkers who find and harvest this rare plant will be able to set up fast growing farms at the place of their choosing. You can also use casino online it to make new recipes!

This update also has our first update for language support: Portuguese!
“Wait… Why Portuguese,” you might be asking yourself.

Well, we”re excited to announce that Nom Nom Galaxy was recently nominated for THREEawards at the upcoming Brazil Independent Games Festival! Nom Nom Galaxy will compete in the Best Art, Best Gameplay, and Best Game categories. We”re honored to be competing against games such as Tengami, Secrets of Rætikon, The Stanley Parable, Gorogoa, and many other great indie games. Of course, Q-Games will be at the festival that week to show off our cooking prowess! Wish us luck!